carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. we are joining you from a very busy bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: this week, we have a special issue for you. the new economy issue. it is a look at the challenges we face and what countries are best positioned to overcome them. jason: challenges like immigration, trade, climate and urbanization. carol: it is a big list. the coincides with bloomberg's

second annual new economy forum in beijing in november. a gathering of leaders with a mission to set the course for the 21st century. jason: lots more of that ahead, let's begin with the top headlines this week from the u.s. to u.k., geopolitics front and center. tim ross joins us with the latest on brexit. tim, great to have you with us. tell us what we saw this week because it seems like, just like in the u.s., we are entering a new phase with brexit. tim: we have an election that is finally being called. boris johnson wanted to trigger this election for about a month and he finally got his way. the country will go to the polls on december 12 and whoever wins the election gets to determine brexit. if johnson wins, his deal will go through. if his main opponent jeremy corbyn wins, that could very easily be another referendum. carol: new referendum -- so does that mean potentially we could

see the brexit negotiation between the u.k. and european union go on beyond january? tim: well, it is certainly true that is one possibility. if jeremy corbyn wins, you might -- he money want to complete -- he might want to complete different deal than the one boris johnson struck. one for example that keeps the u.k. in the european union customs. the biggest issue is how long it will take because the referendum cannot be done in a month or so. it will take more to get the question resolved. carol: the length of this process created a lot of division within the u.k. government, but also among the u.k. public. where are the public in this issue at this point? tim: boris johnson is betting the british public has had enough and want to get brexit done. that is his big election slogan. jeremy corbyn thinks people have

not had enough yet and wants a second go. this will be the third election in 4.5 years in the u.k. and voters are a bit weary of voting. we will have to see whether they punish johnson for that or not. carol: one of the big political and macro issues investors continue to focus on. tim ross, in london, thank you for the update. from london to washington. impeachment pressure on president trump is heating up. let's get to ryan teague beckwith. an important vote in the house this week. let's get up to speed. ryan: it is appropriate it took place on halloween because republicans thought it was a trick, but not really a treat for democrats either. two of them did not vote for the resolution and no republicans voted for it. only one former republican, justin amash, voted for it. jason: what does this mean? it feels like we are entering a new phase, a more public phase, right? ryan: democrats think they have enough evidence so far that they have gathered behind the scenes,

most of which we heard bits and pieces of in leaks and interviews from lawmakers after the fact. they are now moving towards the more formal open process of impeachment. this also addresses the republican concerns levied earlier that this was a secret process being done behind closed doors. carol: set the stage for the next week or weeks in terms of what happens. ryan: partisan vote is the key thing to look at. republicans so far remaining in lockstep on this, in an effort to portray this as partisan effort by democrats to undo the 2016 election. as long as they are on board, that will work. when we get to the senate, it will be harder because senators are going to feel more pressure on that than house members who represent districts that tend to be very sordid. jason: it is clear global economies are watching the political scene around the world. we've got something that will

help them. it is this week's new economy issue. carol: let's get into it with editor joel weber. here to tell us all about it. it is a great issue and another must-read. joel: it is real easy to talk about the news and the short-term stuff but there are bigger issues that are really going to define what the future looks like. that is what the new economy issue is really about. the world's growth will come from the emerging economies rather than the developed ones. that is something hank paulson hits on. the problems this issue is devoted to and the solution we hoped to really identify at the forum in november are really geared towards solving problems in the emerging markets. jason: how do you break that down into something that is digestible? a lot of help on this one, including from bloomberg economics. joel: we actually divide the book up into chapters. it feels more like a book than

any other issue that we do. those chapters aligned with the pillars of the forum. things like trade. that allows us to talk to tom orlik of bloomberg economics who came up with this drivers and disruptors idea to really rank countries based on their abilities to disrupt or drive the global engine of growth. it is interesting. there are some interesting takeaways. the u.s. is not one that rises to the cream like other places. so that's interesting. carol: we have been talking about that, the top one, two, three, four names you might find surprising. joel: i will save it for the issue. carol: yeah, do that. joel: another one is inclusion. there are different ways we can talk about that, but one we chose to look at was women in the workforce via fertility. around the world, we are watching the global fertility rate come down. we are not making enough babies actually. we pulled up some key studies -- case studies via data and

women in various countries to talk about why don't you have more babies? and that impacts their ability to work, whether family life is like. that translates into economic growth because if you are not having future generations behind you, we simply don't have enough people. jason: really big issues, long-term issues tackled in this very special issue of "bloomberg businessweek." joel weber, thank you so much. coming up, we will have more of those bloomberg economics drivers and disruptors. the index looks at how well countries are dealing with issues like automation, climate change and the tariff wars. carol: we will talk about christine lagarde taking over the european central bank. why being the next super mario isn't going to be part of her portfolio. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. join us for "bloomberg

businessweek" every day on the radio starting at 2:00 p.m. wall street time. you can catch up on our daily show by checking out our podcast on apple podcast and bloomberg.com. anywhere you find your podcasts. jason: you can find us online at businessweek.com. carol: in late november, bloomberg will host the second annual new economy forum in beijing. it was established by michael bloomberg, the founder of bloomberg lp, home to bloomberg businessweek and bloomberg radio and bloomberg television. jason: to coincide with that, our bloomberg economics team came up with the new economy drivers and disruptors index. it is not your typical list. it takes a look at the new forces that are narrowing the path to development and who may be holding the keys to the 21st century. carol: i love this. tom orlik is the chief economist who put this together. tom: the way we think about it is something like this. imagine an economy that is doing everything right. their innovative, they have a skilled workforce. they have an efficient government. now imagine that the huge meteor

hurtling towards the country at 1000 miles per hour, and when it hits, it will wipe the country off the map. a traditional economic index, a traditional competitiveness index would tell you that country is doing just great. they are going to be great now, great in 10 years time, 20 years time. time. what our drivers and disruptors report tries to do is tell you about the meteor. tell you about the big risk out there in the global economy in which countries are well-positioned in relation to those risks and which countries, which economies face some challenges. the big meteors we are looking at are protectionism, populism, automation, the rise of the robots, digitization, and of course, the big challenge -- climate change. carol: i love how comprehensive it is. you mentioned the big disruptors you are looking at, but you looked at 114 economies.

essentially, 98% of almost all of the global gdp. you really look at the world, developed and developing. tom: that is right. and, one of the striking takeaways is the difference between how well-positioned advanced economies are and some of the challenges which lower and middle income countries, lower and middle income economies face. the big narrative on the global economy in the last 50 years has been a story of catching up. first, japan. then, korea. then, china catching up to income levels which we see in europe and the u.s., mainly by exporting. what our analysis tells us is that with some of the disruptive forces sweeping the global economy, things like protectionism, things like

automation with robots able to do more and more of the low skill, low-cost jobs which has been an advantage for low-cost economies in the past -- that path to development which low income countries have followed are not broken but it will be harder to follow. carol: i love this whole idea of catching up is hard to do in this environment today. tom: yeah. so, let's think about the big forces that have propelled catching up in the past. so, there is low incomes or low-cost wages. there is the big open global economy. there's policymakers were -- who are willing to make the difficult, sometimes painful reforms to align economies. across each of those, the disruptive forces that we are tracking are going to make life more difficult. jason: tom, you are going to be there in beijing. let's talk about china because it is very prominent in your

reporting. clearly, one of the world's most important economies. this idea of the meteor headed toward earth. clearly, china figures very importantly in this narrative. how does china fit into this? tom: china is a really interesting story. on the traditional drivers of development, china really outperforms. they are the fourth-ranked economy in our index. they are investing in research and development. they've got world-class infrastructure. they've got an increasingly highly skilled workforce. they've got an efficient government. if you look at the traditional drivers of development, china has really got a lot of those firmly in place. when we think about the disruptive forces which are going to be hitting the global economy in the next 10, 20 years, china faces some significant challenges. the most obvious one striking right now is protectionism.

bad for china's exports. bad for china's capacity to learn from foreign technology. looking further forward, china has one of the most exposed countries in the world to climate change. a big population. many of them on the coastline, many of them involved in agriculture. there are some real risks from climate change to china going forward. if we dig into the details of what's going on in china's society, we also see challenges with relatively high levels of inequality. relatively low levels of social mobility. if we look around the world, in other countries which have had those problems, there has been a medium-term challenge for policymakers to address as well. carol: let's talk about the other rankings, because jason and i love going through the list. talk about the countries that are up at the top.

you mentioned china is number four, but talk to us about 1, 2 and three. tom: so, one of the big takeaways from this report is that catching up is getting harder to do. we see that reflected in the rankings. so, we've got advanced economies like some of the northern european economies -- sweden, norway, denmark, germany. some of the high-performing asian economies like singapore. they do really well on the traditional drivers of growth. they also score very well on those disruptive forces. they are well-positioned to deal with the rise of the robots. they've got policies in place to help retrain workers as automation takes over a larger share of traditional jobs. they're well-positioned on the digital economy. their consumers, businesses, government are all engaged in the digital opportunities.

they're exposed to protectionism, but they don't have that really high exposure to protectionism that we see in some of the asian exporters and some of the advanced economies which are breaking their trade ties with the rest of the world. carol: just to sum up, where is the u.s. in all of this in terms of drivers versus disruptors? tom: the u.s. is engaged in a trade war against china. a trade war with china. and, the motivation for that trade war is partly to determine who is going to be holding the keys to the global economy in the 21st century. who's going to be the most competitive? who is going to have the most advanced technologies? part of the motivation on the u.s. side is the concern that china is not playing by the global rules. they are not protecting intellectual property.

they are forcing western firms to hand over technology. if we have a trade war and we win that trade war, then those problems will be solved and america will be number one. what our report is telling us is, well, that is all well and good, but there are also a bunch of things you need to do at home to make sure you're competitive for the future. things like really making sure you have well-funded infrastructure. really making sure you are making significant investments in research and development to retain the competitive technology edge. jason: coming up, the new era about to begin the european central bank thanks to christine lagarde. carol: she enters at a time when her leadership skills are being put to the test. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: and, i'm carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, and 1130 am in new york, 91.1 fm in washington, d.c. nine in the bay area and through the bloomberg business app. carol: this week, christine lagarde took over as the european central bank, its first female leader. she inherits a few things from mario draghi, her predecessor. she also brings a skill set many that before her did not have. jason: the latest in her trailblazing career and an important story because it will set the tone for the european economy. here's jana randow in frankfurt with her story, you can find online. jana: she has a lot of challenges to tackle. she takes over the ecb at a time when the economy is not doing really well. we are in a slowdown. germany, the largest economy in the region probably is already in recession.

inflation is very low. monetary policy at the ecb is very expansionary. there is quite a big rift in the governing council as to what could be done as to the policies that are needed to overcome the situation. there was a big debate over the last stimulus push. she comes in at a time when all of that needs to be fixed. carol: there is frustration among the ecb policymakers about what the ecb is doing and versus what policymakers in the region are doing, or should i say, not doing to help out the economies. jana: policymakers at the ecb have really stepped up their call in governments to do their part to use fiscal space, to implement fiscal stimulus where they have room to do so. to implement structural reforms to boost growth potential in the region. so far, governments have taken very small steps towards that.

they have signaled their willingness on germany but not nearly as much as policymakers would like to see. carol: one of the things we are interested in -- we very often talk with christine lagarde. she is going to be a different type of leader and her priorities are going to be different. she is not someone who is an economist that comes to this job. jason: i think we talked to you about her on "60 minutes" in the u.s. a couple of weekends ago. the tone she is going to set, and if you were to cast two people, you would not get more different in any way than mario draghi and christine lagarde. how is that stylistic difference going to play through? jana: i think she comes at a time when her skills are desperately needed. she's a very good communicator. she knows how to reach out to the people, how to talk to the people which is something mario draghi, despite his economic brilliance, has not really done a lot over the past couple of years.

so, to come in now and to go out to the public and explain why that monetary policy, that expansionary monetary policy that reduces interest in savings is needed is very important. she's very interested in social changes and climate change. although -- all those are issues at the heart of the debate at the moment. so, we can expect to hear from her on those issues as well. mario draghi, on the other hand, stellar economist with impeccable training. that is something she does not have, but she can rely on the ecb staff and she has a lot of experts there as well. jason: it is so interesting you talk about her experience versus draghi's. i think two things come to mind. one is she has been in the belly of the beast as it were in washington, but also at the imf, very concerned with developing economies as well as developed economies.

-- her her latest job previous job, i should say, will help her bring in terms of her scope of the world? jana: she is used to dealing with people from a lot of different backgrounds. as you mentioned, emerging markets, developed nations, political leaders, economists, financial leaders. all of that experience she brings to the ecb where you have just policymakers, but also from very different backgrounds. if you think about policymakers from germany. a very traditional conservative official. where you have people from the southern states, from greece, from italy which prefer a generally looser monetary policy. different views on fiscal policy as well. it is a very diverse crowd at the ecb which is why we some of -- why we see some of the

problems, some of the arguments play out in the public. i think she will bring her skills to the table and will be able to forge a compromise. carol: we turn to one of the hottest investments. the collateralized loan obligation, or clo. jason: it is one of those funky creations of wall street wizardry. it has been around for decades but it really booned after the financial crisis. now, trouble may be brewing. here is this week's businessweek explainer. it is a wall street invention, collateralized loan obligations, also known as clo's. one of the hottest investments in the financial world, turning a bunch of risky corporate loans into a security. in the past decade, the clo market has doubled to more than $600 billion. here's why. interest rates on the old standbys like u.s. treasuries or german government bonds are so low that investors are next to nothing. while you can get less than 2% in treasuries, a clo can earn you more than 3% for aaa rated, up to 13% or more for the riskiest investments.

of course, there is a catch. some of the borrowers, companies, has been the last decade loading up on more than $1 trillion of junk-rated debt. now, almost a third of the market is on the brink of falling into the dreaded ccc tier. clo's are discouraged from owning too much of that type of debt. if the economy turns sour, clo's could be drowning in ultra risky loans and all those companies that loaded up on the debt could find themselves with fewer investors eager to lend to them. coming up, treating plastic as currency to bring people into the financial system via recycled bottles. and we are not talking about credit cards. carol: no. we are not at all. a gathering of world government and policy leaders with a mission to set the course of the 21st century. we preview bloomberg's new economy forum. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ sometimes your small screen is your big screen.

and with the xfinity stream app, which is free with your service, you can take a spin through on demand shows, or stream live tv. download your dvr'd shows and movies on the fly. even record from right where you are. whether you're travelling around the country or around the house, keep what you watch with you. download the xfinity stream app and watch all the shows you love.

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. still ahead, turning a car city into a pedestrian paradise. how one urban planner is making cities safer and cleaner. carol: plus, we have a conversation with lauren greenfield on her latest documentary, "the kingmaker." jason: we begin with this week's special new economy issue. here is the editor behind it

all, christina linblad. christina: hi. jason: this was a big project, because you talk about economics all the time, every week in the magazine, but this is a different take. christina: i think about this issue all year long. it is a great repository of stories that we might not be able to do the rest of the year because we have certain sections and certain issues don't fit very well within those sections. jason: speaking of repositories, plastic. we are not talking about credit cards, we are talking about actual plastic being used to pay for things. cristina: the plastic bank is a project that started with this entrepreneur in vancouver and the first one opened in haiti. we visited one in bali and indonesia. basically the idea is to make plastic worth something and give people an incentive to not throw it out. so basically, we talked to people there who, you know, supplement their income by

collecting plastic and redeeming it at the plastic bank. the plastic bank had ibm build them a sort of e-wallet app that people can use to track their income and savings. they can use those credits that they have and redeem them at certain stores. so for example somebody can earn like seven dollars per month. that does not sound like a lot in the united states, but indonesia is a country where gdp per capita is only 3000 something dollars per year. carol: it sounds like such a simple solution to what is kind of a big problem, giving people a financial identity, as well as solving a pollution problem. cristina: that's right. the idea is that these countries have a huge number of unbanked people. this is training people, like, what are savings?

we talked to one guy who said i used to go to a recycling center and redeem the plastic and just get paid right there, but now he sort of has an incentive to save it up. carol: another big story in the magazine is immigration. what i love about this story is that there has been such a pushback against immigration by so many different countries around the world, and yet, a lot of countries need it because they need workers. cristina: this is a project i definitely wanted to do and this is an example of something, like, where do we address this? we had one of the sections in the issue was governance. i thought, what is something that needs really good policy? it is sort of this movement of people, which has become such a hot political issue. it is imperative for certain economies to keep, you know, to keep immigration alive as a necessity, right. how do you make it work for you? so we looked at three different examples. i think canada is one of the

most interesting because it has this system that takes in economic migrants, so not political asylum-seekers or anything else. if you are applying as an economic migrant in canada, you are going to get scored on several criteria, your skills, your education, your past work -- not performance, like what kind of jobs you've had. language, so the national languages of canada, french and english. that score will determine whether you will be offered permanent residence. carol: other countries are looking at this program, right? cristina: yes, new zealand and australia have already adopted it. their programs are modeled on canada. and the u.s., there are two republican legislators who have proposed this part of big reform in immigration. jason: what is cool about that story and people should check it out is that you sort of give it

some sweep but you add some personal examples as well. let's talk about climate. we talk about it here a lot at bloomberg. there's a whole effort in the newsroom. you look at it through one river. tell us about that. cristina: we went to a river that runs through several countries in southern africa. we chose southern africa because it is one of the most vulnerable places in terms of basically people and governments do not have the money to spend in mitigation. we looked at in this river, the zambezi, which starts in zambia and winds down to mozambique. in the north, the problem has been drought. and in the south, there have been two floods and cyclones. it is basically the story of wacky weather and how it plays out for these communities along the river. carol: these are important and global issues and you tackle it so well in the magazine. cristina, thank you so much. economics editor cristina lindblad overseeing the economic and really this issue this week.

keep in mind, in late november, bloomberg will host the second annual new economy forum in beijing. it was established by mike bloomberg, the founder of bloomberg lp. jason: here is andy browne. he is the editorial director of bloomberg's new economy forum. andy: the big narrative behind the new economy forum is the reality of a global economy in the throes of profound wrenching and highly disruptive change. by and large, this change is being botched by global institutions, national governments, global leaders. and we believe that it is crucially important to put businesses in a room together with governments to start talking about these issues that are threatening to pull apart the global economy. carol: public-private partnerships, discussion. andy: exactly. so the starting point is to get the right groups of people

together and then to curate conversations in a way which will produce results. we want productive conversations. carol: how fortuitous that you are in beijing considering the backdrop, with everything that has been going on, specifically with the u.s. and china but everybody focused on china right now. andy: it is highly symbolic that we are in asia. we launched the event in singapore last year. this is the second year we are going to be in beijing. we talk about transitions. of course, the biggest transition in the world today is the shift in wealth and power from the globalized, global north of the planet, from the west of the planet to the east. we felt it was really important to host this conversation in a part of the global economy which is really going to be the future. jason: all right, so we talk about the global economy, and yet, we have spent a lot of time with you week to week talking about decoupling. that certainly is part of the

backdrop here amid not just the ongoing trade discussions, but the day to day decisions that companies are making about supply chains, about where customers are, how they are going to even manufacture their products. help feather that into some of the discussions you plan to have. andy: so, again, we are looking at transitions. we are stumbling towards global catastrophe in a number of areas. i mean, climate obviously, but not just climate. the global trading system is falling apart. global central banks have run out of ammunition to fight the next financial crisis. you mentioned u.s.-china. these two countries have failed to invent a new form or a new foundation for a relationship that once seemed so perfectly symmetrical. carol: right.

and with a china that is grown up now. andy: grown-up. and this symmetrical relationship, you know, america invented, china innovated. america consumed, china produced. it all fit together so well. it was complementary, and it is now fundamentally competitive. both countries are going after the same thing, which is dominance in the industries of the future, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics. the problem is that these areas are all of them dual use civilian/military. the competition bleeds into security and military competition. they need to figure out a new way of managing this competition. carol: more from the new economy issue, disruption and transportation in the backlash against cars. jason: a conversation with lauren greenfield on her latest meticulous and rather disturbing documentary, "the kingmaker." carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek."

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jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: and i am carol massar. you can catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast at apple podcast, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. jason: you can find us online at businessweek.com and through our mobile app. carol: back to our special new economy issue. it is a story on a renegade urban planner who turned a car city into a pedestrian paradise. jason: but rolling it out elsewhere won't be easy. here's editor max chapman on the superblock revolution. max: if you look at kind of a 1950's style public housing, basically a lot of the sort of urban thought that was going on in the 1940's and 1950's, this idea of building these giant towers with the big roads around them and the idea would be that

people could sort of walk within these blocks, superblocks. carol: considered a good thing? max: yes, and people have kind of moved away from that. we have moved to these cities with the little grades and all sorts of stuff. the story that we have is about a town in northern spain. it is basically a town where they just started radically getting rid of streets with cars. the town has created 63 of these superblocks, and these are streets wher basically cars are not allowed. the only way to have a car is if you live on the street or you are a business and getting a delivery. and the cars can only go 10 kilometers per hour. carol: six miles, right? max: yes, six miles. it is a jog -- not a jog, it is a pedestrian scale pace. everything else, as the writer describes very poetically in the story, is basically cyclists, pedestrians, children. you have toddlers running about. it is really kind of like car free paradise.

at least if that is yoru paradise. carol: tell us about the guy who is behind it, because he has really led the charge here. max: salvador, who is a spanish urban planner. he has done these superblock conversions in spain. he has done a little bit of work in south america, and ecuador and buenos aires. there is even a plan in seattle to bring superblocks there although that is still kind of in discussions. carol: seattle is washington, washington is seattle. it's ok. max: yeah. the intersting thing about this is he has had a lot more success in spain, especially in this town which because his laboratory. this is proof that this concept can work. carol: is it just prime in terms of how the locale is set up? max: it's partly cultural. these cities in spain are very small, pedestrian oriented.

europe, most of these cities were laid out pre-automobile. a place like buenos aires is way more dependent on cars, much like an american city, and there it has been much more controversial. they have had complaints. they have been able to pull it off in a few neighborhoods, but not on the scale of spain. what is provocative to me here is that this does not cost a lot of money. you don't really have to, you know, you're not demolishing anything. you're basically just telling people they cannot drive their cars on the street. it's almost like a cultural solution to the problem of climate change and also traffic deaths. jason: so what's the downside? obviously, folks are reliant on cars.

you think about a lot of american cities where the commutes have gotten bigger and bigger. people are trying to move into cities and yet, cities in many cases are not affordable. how do all of those things balance out? max: one downside, maybe you don't want to live like this. having a car is very convenient. it's a big part on how people in a lot of parts of the world people relate to their surroundings. there is the gentrification issue. you start creating these beautiful urban islands and we have seen this and we have seen this in lots of places, including the u.s., and real estate prices go up and the people who live there are forced to leave. the sort of spanish solution to that is to put lots of superblocks everywhere so it will not affect the real estate prices too much. jason: a story you can also find online, an interview with a cofounder of infosys. he returned to his company two years ago following the firing and scandal around the then ceo. carol: we have more from tech editor jeff muskus.

jeff: he co-founded infosys in the early 80's and has been with the company and number of top roles for much of that time, including for the ceo before 2009, when he left to join the indian government and a newly created position to help develop this sort of biometric id program that has been controversial for reasons you might imagine. carol: you kind of skimmed over. that is a big deal. it is very controversial. jeff: this kind of biometric data/national id card program is now used by some 1.2 billion indians for things including social security payments and baseline id and all kinds of ways that did not really exist in a stratified weight in india a decade ago, but that has proven controversial among

privacy advocates because the system has proven relatively ripe for abuse. it is easier to fool than you might think. there are ongoing concerns about the degree to which people's data, including their biometric data, might be used for nefarious purposes. jason: between that job been and working on that and now his day job and a company he founded, infosys, it really takes us into the heart of arguably some of the biggest issues of our time as it relates to privacy, as it relates to technology and its role in our lives. what did he have to say about things like, for instance, artificial intelligence? jeff: ai, along with big data in general, which is sort of our buzz word for ai before we start using ai, was the big differentiator in his mind between various companies in the

i.t. outsourcing space, like infosys, as they have tried to approach the big cloud companies and the other big industry leaders around the world who try to differentiate themselves by figuring out as much about their customers as possible. that also raises privacy issues on the other end, as you might imagine, that the differentiator here in the industry's mind is how much more they can figure out about a given company's customer base than they might have been able to a decade ago, but without particularly going into a ton of detail about big that information. carol: why did you want to talk to him? no, it's like, you go back to when this company was first created, we used to talk about infosys a lot. i feel like we do not talk about it that much anymore. i understand there was a scandal a couple of years ago. he's got a backpage in the magazine. why him and why now? jeff: has been a pretty central

figure in india's tech space for much of the past half-century and all the more so now that he has helped play a leading role in the development of this program. you are right that infosys, like the other leading i.t. out sourcers in india was a much bigger question a couple of years ago when the questions about america's tech scene revolved around h1b's and the degree to which immigrant labor was used to keep wages artificially low. in the trump era, the conversation has shifted. the administration has made good on some of its crackdowns. it has also shifted the conversation around immigration and wages and of course big tech as well, as the fallout from the

2016 election has put the industry into much different focus. jason: up next, filmmaker lauren greenfield on her latest documentary, "the kingmaker." carol: and how the former first lady of the philippines refuses to go away. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: and i'm jason kelly. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, am 1130 in new york. carol: am 960 in the bay area and london on dab digital and on the bloomberg business app. that's where you can find our radio interview, such as the one that we did with lauren greenfield. we talked with her about her latest documentary, "the kingmaker." it offers a portrait about the former first lady of the philippines. a look into the crimes of the marcos family and their comeback.

jason: we should note that bloomberg provided financial support for the film and it was actually inspired in part by a story in bloomberg pursuits. lauren: i began filming in 2014 and never expected the project to take five years. it actually began with a bloomberg article by a journalist named william miller about this animal island that i never heard of. this was the kind of ultimate extravagance. she depopulated an island in the south china sea of its indigenous population and brought in animals from africa and four generations later, they have been inbred basically, because no new animals. they have no support, no vets, no -- the parents were gone that brought them there. so the story began with that, but what happened was bong-bong, imelda's son, ran for the vice presidency.

as a family they were kind of in the political wilderness. no journalist thought he had a chance. as he began to gain steam and became a front runner, the election story really took over the narrative of the film. what began as a historical film about this kind of crazy extravagance turned into a present-day political story about the connection between wealth and power and the possibility of rewriting history. carol: which we have seen repeated, i feel like, around the globe. how timely, right? jason: what is so amazing about this, and i have been very fortunate, lauren and i have gotten to know each other over the years. this is, as you say, such a different film, and incredible y timely in so many ways. and even when you just watch the trailer, you think, oh my god, and i say this a little bit glibly, but meaningfully, this is 2019. i mean, it is just remarkable. so when did you realize that the story had taken such a sharp turn? was it around the election?

was there some reporting that you did that sort of turned that light on for you? lauren: well, the first stage was seeing how they were really trying to come back to power, how imelda was a congresswoman, which i thought was a respectful thing to do to the former first lady, but gradually realized that it was part of a bigger plan. many of her kids were in politics. when he, bong-bong, decided to run for the vice presidency, the bloomberg reporter said he does not have a chance. that's what people thought. i think the first real change was when he became the front runner. it looked like he could really take it. as they were gaining steam, the past started dredging up into the present. the young people did not remember martial law, the ills of the regime.

the marcos were really going about rewriting history through their narrative, which was being kind of repeated in social media. and as this started to kind of take hold, it became clear that they could effectively come back. jason: and "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands now. carol: it is indeed. also online at businessweek.com. and on our mobile app. jason: it is a big issue. carol: i really loved reading all of it but i have to say the bloomberg new economy drivers and disruptors index, i think it is a must read for everyone. there is so much going on around the world. there are drivers helping various countries. you might be surprised by some of our findings. we do a ranking and it might not be exactly what you expect. jason: what i loved is that there is a lie in the magazine, but if you go online, you can start to go down these rabbit holes of i did not know that about the swedish economy. carol: exactly. what is your must-read? jason: i love the piece on christine lagarde taking over at the ecb. so much has been written and

talked about as it relates to her, but i really learned something. i loved it. carol: it's a new era for the ecb. jason: check out our daily "businessweek" podcast. get that at bloomberg.com. carol: more bloomberg television starts now. ♪ here, it all starts with a simple...

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